The Democrats’ Low-Energy Tax Plan

Democrats made a passionate and extended case against the tax bill President Donald Trump signed in December. The Senate Democrats’ new tax-and-infrastructure plan walks away from that case in nearly every particular.

The proposal undoes parts of the new tax law in order to fund increased infrastructure spending. But it revises the tax law in ways that fit poorly with the arguments Democrats were making in the very recent past.

The plan raises the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, which Republicans cut from 35 percent to 21 percent. The Republicans exempted many upper-middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax and raised the threshold for the estate tax; the Democrats would undo both cuts. The Republicans cut the top statutory tax rate on income from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. Democrats want to go back to 39.6.